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Abraham Lincoln 

MAN AND STATESMAN 

(ABRIDGED) 

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BY 

WM. PICKENS 



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COPYRIGHTED 1910 

BY 

Wm. PICKENS 



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Abraham Lincoln 

MAN AND STATESMAN 



We are here today in praise of "arms and a man." And in 
praising the wisdom of the man or recounting the success of tin- 
arms it is no part of our purpose to deride those who disagreed 
with that man nor to taunt those who were vanquished by those 
arms. 

We are here in memory of the humblest citizen of a nation, 
and in honor of the greatest statesman of his time. Abraham Lin- 
coln's life ran the whole gamut of American society. He was born 
into the "poor white trash" of the Southern backwoods; he was 
pioneer and frontiersman ; he was rail-splitter and Hat-boatman : 
he was champion wrestler, cock-pit umpire and saloon-keeper; he 
was merchant, surveyor and country lawyer; he was the leading 
lawyer and politician, the acknowledged head and the champion 
orator of a political party in his state; he was legislatOi, congress- 
man, statesman and President; he was leader in the most remark- 
able war of modern times — he was the tallest figure of the nine- 
teenth century — he was the liberator of a race and martyr to the 
life of his country. Abraham Lincoln was the first president of 
the United States who was characteristically American. 

One hundred years ago in what was then Hardin County, Ken- 
tucky, Abraham Lincoln was born. In the aristocratic sense of 
the phrase, he was a man of "no ancestry." His father was prob- 
ably descended from people who came first from England to Mas- 
sachusetts, thence to Virginia, thence to Kentucky. Abraham 
Lincoln's grandfather and namesake was a brother-in-law of 
Daniel Boone and was one of the pioneers of the middle West. 
This grandfather had been shot by the Indians when Lincoln's 
father. Thomas Lincoln, was about six years of age. Mordecai, 
brother of Lincoln's father, is reputed to have been industrious, 
but Thomas, the father of Abraham Lincoln, was what we might 
call, without exaggeration, lazy and trifling. 

When we consider this man's ancestry and early surroundings. 
we are both enlightened and confused: we are enlightened in that 
we can see in his humble origin the source of his sympathy for 
his humblest fellow-man, in his frontier life we can see the cause 
of his manly independence, and in his early associations we can 
see the foundation of his firm faith in the "plain people," — but we 
are confuted in that we cannot rind in his immediate parentage 
and environment the necessary stimulus and inspiration, and from 
his early lack of opportunity we cannot account for the develop- 
ment of mental power, tact and executive ability. In these lat- 
ter respects the law of cause and effect is apparently broken. 

His mother had been one Nancy Hanks, a woman of very 
humble origin and of a melancholy disposition. His father Thomas 
was a thriftless, ignorant fellow who loved to tell stories. He 
seemed to lack the instinct or ambition to settle down and build 
a decent home, even after he was married, lie moved and moved 
and moved, and like the proverbial "rolling stone," he gathered 



no moss. The ignorance and inconsequentiality of the Lincoln 
family might be gathered from the fact that it had no uniform 
and settled way of spelling its name: sometimes it was spelled 
L-i-n-k-h-o-r-n, sometimes L-i-n-c-k-o-r-n, sometimes even L-i-c-k- 
e-r-n. 

As is well known, such poor white people in the first half of 
the nineteenth century had very limited chances in a slave com- 
monwealth, and so. to escape the condition into which slavery 
forced the poorer whites, when the son was but seven or eight 
years old, the happy-go-lucky, unprogressive father loaded all the 
family belongings on a boat of his own construction and floated 
down the Ohio to Indiana. This aimless traveler finally landed 
and constructed a rude camp in a wild, uninhabited region near 
the present town of Gentryville, Indiana. The structure which 
Thomas Lincoln here erected to shelter his wife and young chil- 
dren, cannot be named out of the terminology of the dwellings 
of civilized man. It was not a house; it was what was known 
in pioneer days as a "half-faced camp"; that is ,it was closed on 
only three sides and its floor was the earth. The bed was con- 
structed from a number of poles fastened to the logs in one cor- 
ner of this cheerless habitation, the outer corner of the bed being 
supported by a forked stick. In this camp the wife and children 
shivered for one whole winter, before Thomas could rouse himself 
to provide a better dwelling. 

The melancholy, feeble mother died in the boy's childhood; 
an event which is a great calamity to most boys but was a great 
blessing to young Abe, for it enabled him to acquire at the early 
age of ten a very capable, energetic and motherly stepmother. 
This God-sent stepmother treated Abe and his little sister with 
impartiality among her own children ; she also aroused all of what- 
ever human aspiration there was in the father Thomas. She be- 
came the boy's tutor and protector against the educational indif- 
ference and hostility of his father; for Thomas was quite willing 
that his posterity should forever go the way their father and 
their fathers had gone. 

The neighbors say that the boy Abe was "awful lazy," by 
which they mean that he was fonder of thinking and studying and 
talking and reasoning and story-telling, than he was of physical 
exertion. But the sympathetic stepmother understood and fos- 
tered the ambition of the boy. He had been to school a little: all 
his schooling put together would not amount to more than one 
year, some say not more than six months. But this limited bit 
of schooling was sread over a period of nine years, and the boy 
made good use of what he learned in school by self-culture in the 
intervals, all of which might teach us the important educational 
principle that it is not the quantity of schooling but the thorough- 
ness of it. The boy even developed enough of the poetic spirit 
to be the author of this stanza: 

"Abraham Lincoln 

His hand and pen. 
He will be good, but 

God knows when." 

The neighborhood of Gentryville was very superstitious: it 
believed in the bad luck of Fridays and in the influence of the 
moon on crops. So Abraham Lincoln was superstitious till his 
dying day. He was an ungainly looking lad and did not arouse 
high expectations by his personal appearance. He was lanky in 
appearance, with a head of unmanageable hair, and had what at 



first struck one as a lazy, dreamy look about the eyes. His clothes 
were made of tanned deer hide, his trousers usually being sev- 
eral inches too short and his suspenders of the one-gallows kind. 
Tims endowed by nature and thus clad in the garb of frontier pov- 
erty, he was not an attractive looking youngster, and a lawyer of 
the time who saw him, described it as "the ungodliest sight I ever 
saw." When Abraham was twenty-one his roving father moved 
again, still westard, and this time to a place near Decatur, in Illi- 
nois. Thus at the legal age of manhood he entered, unknown and 
unrespected, the state which was to be the future theatre of his 
life- — of the greatest life of that State, of that Nation and of that 
Century. 

It is impossible for any fiction to be stranger than the sub- 
sequent life of this poor boy. It was now the year 1830, and in 
thirty years more he was to be the chosen executive of the great- 
est Republic of history. He had worked at hard manual drudgery 
since his babyhood. Now legally emancipated from his father, 
he helped to build a house for the family, split rails to make 
fences, and with the small bundle of all his earthly possessions he 
set out into the world to pursue his ambition. He was physically 
powerful and wiry; mentally slow, but patient, persistent and 
sure. 

The story of this man's rise from that time forth should make 
every American proud of American institutions and American pos- 
sibilities. The fact of his rise is a proof of Democracy, and the 
success of his rise is a justification of Republican government. 
His first trip into the wide, wide world was taken in 1831 to New 
Orleans, where he met, saw and hated slavery. On his return to 
Illinois he out-wrestled Jack Armstrong, the champion wrestler of 
the frontier, and ran for the General Assembly in 1832. The fact 
that a man with Lincoln's antecedents and attainments could en- 
ter the race for legislator of Illinois, shows what Western politics 
meant in that day. In this his first political contest he announced 
a principle which became the leading principle of all his after life 
and the chief element of his great statesmanship: he said, "so soon 
as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to re- 
nounce them." This was in New Salem. He was beaten in this 
contest, but he could say with pride in after years that it was 
the only time in which Abraham was beaten on a direct vote of 
the people. In this same year he had been a captain of volunteers 
in the Black Hawk War, and this man who was destined to com- 
mand an army of a million men. when he gave his first order to 
this little volunteer company, received for a reply, "Go to the devil, 
sir." Once forgetting the necessary word of command for swing- 
ing his company endwise so that it could march through a nar- 
row gate, he simply shouted: "This company is dismissed for two 
minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the gate." 
After his political defeat he went into the store-keeping business 
and failed; his partner was too lazy and Abe himeslf was too 
fond of talking and reading politics to attend the success of the 
venture. He was also postmaster of New Salem in 1833, carrying 
the letters in his hat, and was assistant to the county surveyor. 

All the while he was studying law, which seemed ridiculous to 
his acquaintances. He was successful in getting to the legislature 
in 1834. where he served four terms. His chief acts in this body 
were protesting against its pro-slavery resolutions and helping to 
enact some very disastrous financial legislation. He had been 
admitted to the bar in 1836 and moved to Springfield in 1837. 

Being a very susceptible lover he first fell into love with a 
girl who died of a broken heart for another man. He wished to 



marry on the slightest provocation, and after a fruitless Platonic 
affair with another woman he finally married Miss Mary Todd in 
1842, she declaring that she did not marry him because he was 
good-looking, but because she thought he would some day be Pres- 
ident of the United States. In 1847 he entered the lower house of 
Congress for one term, where he again put himself on record 
against slavery extension. It was not until after this Congressional 
term that he was finally able to pay the last of the debts occa- 
sioned by his business failure, and the faithful payment won him 
the useful title of "Honest Old Abe." 

He now seemed to retire from politics and to settle down to 
the life of a practising lawyer, when in 1854 the country became a 
volcano of political activity, and Abraham Lincoln was again 
aroused to take a hand in the greatest political battles in the his- 
tory of free government. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
had aroused the most latent anti-slavery feeling in the North to 
its highest pitch. This compromise had limited the northward 
spread of slavery to a certain parallel, and when it was repealed, 
even conservative men like Lincoln felt bound to cry out. Doug- 
las, the Democratic statesman, had fathered this "repeal" and the 
enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which was to allow the 
people of those territories to decide for themselves whether or not 
they should have slavery. In 1854 Lincoln debated this question 
against the Democratic champion, and at Peoria he said: "Re- 
peal the Missouri Compromise, repeal all compromises, repeal the 
Declaration of Independence, repeal all past history, you still can- 
not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's 
heart that slavery extension is wrong, and out of the abundance 
of his heart his mouth will continue to speak." 

He at once becomes the recognized champion of those who 
were opposed to the "repeal" and the Nebraska Bill. His oratori- 
cal powers had been wonderfully developed by his constant law 
practice since his retirement from Congress. He had ridden the 
circuit and told stories with the Western lawyers and judges and 
could fairly "skin" his opponent in court. His method of argu- 
ment avoided sophistry and led straight to the heart of the matter. 
He was now well known in Illinois and was universally esteemed, 
and was at once accepted as just the man with the qualities to 
cope with the doughty Douglas, the famous "Little Giant." This 
Douglas was called "Little Giant" because of the smallness of his 
body as compared with the largeness of his mind. 

Lincoln had been a Whig. In 1856 the Republican Party was 
formed, which crystallized the opposition to the spread of slavery. 
In his state he became the undisputed leader of this party. Their 
nominee for the Presidency was defeated and Buchanan was 
elected. Immediately followed Judge Taney's "Dred Scott Decis- 
ion," which further drew the line between those who favored and 
those who opposed slavery. 

The next year, 1858, is famous for the Lincoln-Douglas De- 
bates. Douglas's senatorial term was about to expire and the Re- 
publicans put forward Lincoln to contest for the prize. Lincoln 
had already magnanimously yielded one senatorial contest to se- 
cure the election of an anti-Nebraska Democrat, and he had lost 
a nomination for the vice-Presidency. In the contest with Doug- 
las he won the debates but lost the senatorship. This man's 
losses, however, later proved to be his greater gains. 

It is interesting to compare and contrast these two champions. 
They were both conservative, sober-minded men. But Douglas 
was a recognized statesman, while Lincoln was but a novus homo. 
Few outside of Lincoln's own friends and better acquaintances ex- 



pected him to come off with any honor against the fierce "Little 
Giant." Douglas was quick; Lincoln was deliberate. Douglas 
was polished and cultured; Lincoln was an uncouth, poor-man- 
nered man, according to social standards. Douglas was cunning 
and devious in argument; Lincoln was straight as an arrow. Doug- 
las was a powerful intellect; and so was Lincoln. 

The battle was eagerly watched throughout the North, which 
had become a sort of political caldron, because of what wa> felt 
to be the aggressions of the pro-slavery element. Like a know- 
ing antagonist Lincoln attacked Douglas at his most vulnerable 
point, assailing his record in connection with the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise and the passage of the Nebraska Bill. 
Douglas, skillful sophist that he was, dodged and attempted to 
parry this blow by thrusting certain well-directed questions at 
Lincoln. Whereupon Lincoln turned interrogatory himself and 
asked Douglas one question which destroyed Douglas, split Doug- 
las's party in twain, and drew the issue squarely between the op- 
posing forces of the entire country. He asked Douglas a question 
which, if answered in the affirmative, would offend the South, and 
which, if answered in the negative, would offend Illinois. Douglas 
wanted the immediate senatorship from Illinois, so he ansered 
in the affirmative and gained the senatorship, hut he offended the 
South and lost their support for the Presidency two years later — 
just as Lincoln had calculated. The famous question was — "Can 
the people of a Territory, in a lawful way. against the wish of 
an} r citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from that Ter- 
ritory, prior to its adoption of a State Constitution?" 

Douglas was re-elected to the senatorship by the stae legisla- 
ture, but Luncoln was from that day the chosen man of the people 
of Illinois. In a parade prior to one of the debates the Douglas 
men had carried an inscription which read. "The Little Giant." and 
the Lincoln men carried an inscription which read, "Lincoln, the 
Giant Killer." Douglas had traveled on special trains, with wav- 
ing banners and beating drums; Lincoln had journeyed in the sim- 
plicity of the most undistinguished citizen. Douglas had spent 
$80,000 in his canvass; Lincoln had spent less than $1,000. Lin- 
coln had lost and Douglas had won; Douglas had grown weak 
and Lincoln had grown strong. 

Lincoln was now in the eye of the country and was invited to 
lecture in the East, which he did so acceptably as to utterly aston- 
ish all the bigots of New York and New England who had not be- 
lieved that anything very remarkable could come out of the West. 
Horace Greely and others who did not like Seward, began to see 
in Lincoln a presidential possibility. In 1S60 he was nominated 
and elected by the Republican party, the first Chief Executive to 
come out of the great Northwest. 

So slow is the world to believe, that even then there was 
scarcely anybody who thought Lincoln really competent to till 
the office and accomplish the task before him. Six states had se- 
ceded before he could be inaugurated. The South was very angry. 
The Union was actually going to pieces. Europe was laughing and 
acting with the airs of one who feels like shouting: "I told you 
so!" And the greater sentiment in the North at this time seemed 
disposed to let the States secede without war ; men were not in- 
clined to fight, they were too busy in their shops and factories- — 
they had no time to measure the world-wide, age-long conse- 
quences of the destruction of the greatest Republic in the world. 
Men poked fun at the new President as an ordinary Western law- 
yer with no executive ability. Cartoonists vied with one another 
in caricaturing his homely looks, exaggerating the longness of his 



arms and legs, the size of his feet and the thickness of his lips. 
He was represented as subhuman, as a gorilla, some even charg- 
ing him with the very heinous offence of being part "nigger." All 
thi he bore with the steadfastness and courage of a man who 
knows himself. He never swerved from his position that the 
Union must be preserved, adding an element to our statesmanship 
by showing that the first and foremost duty of a government is 
to defend its own existence, and that the right to do this is inher- 
ent in the nature of government and does not have to be conceded 
to it among any delegated powers. If the Government had in any 
way whatsoever, either by grant or conquest, acquired the right 
to exist, that very right carried with it the duty of self-preserva- 
tion. On the question of slavery he was not an Abolitionist, by 
politics at least. It was his expressed wish that all men every- 
where might be free, but as President of the United States he was 
not an officer of the Abolition Societies, but the chief executive 
of the American government under the Constitution — and the Con- 
sitution protected slavery. So, whatever were his private feel- 
ings on the question, he intended to sacrifice them to his solemn 
oath to defend the Constitution. He enforced the "fugitive slave 
law" and in his inaugural he had renounced any intention to inter- 
fere with slavery where it already existed legally. But he^ was 
against its further extension, and upon this he said he would "hold 
firm as a chain of steel." 

So while the South was fast uniting and preparing for war, 
the North was rather undecided and hesitant, but the guns of 
Sumter, which were heard around the world and whose echo shall 
resound through all the future history of a great Nation, did what 
neither Lincoln nor danger from the South nor a mere latent love 
for the Union could do — they absolutely united the North. Demo- 
crats and Republicans, the followers of Douglas and the followers 
of Lincoln, became of one mind to settle the question of the per- 
petuity of the Union; all Northern parties became one party, which 
might be denominated the War Party. A call for seventy-five 
thousand was answered by the willing voices of a million, and 
Massachusetts had a regiment on the way to Washington within 
48 hours after the call. 

Here again comes out the chief element of his statemanshin: 
he did not call until he knew that men were ready, and even anx- 
ious to come. If he had called for troops as soon as he was in- 
augurated, he would probably have received much the same re- 
ply as when he gave his first orders to the Black Hawk volunteers. 
"My policy is to have no policy," said he; he waited upon events 
and acted according to the great heart and the great will of the 
people. "Time was his prime minister." After deciding upon a 
course of action he never outran the opportunity: he made every 
effort consisten with the authority of government to win concilia- 
tion, but he called for troops when men were ready to fight; he 
revoked the emancipation orders of his too hasty generals, but in 
response to the popular demand he issued his Emancipation Proc- 
lamation upon the heels of a Federal victory; he returned fugitive 
slaves, but when the Northern soldiers had become so weary as 
to be glad for anybody to help do the fighting, he called for the 
black legions, whose appearance marked the turning point of the 
War. 

And the guns of Sumter had no less effect upon the men of 
the South. Eleven esceded States formed themselvs into a Con- 
fderacy. The Border states of Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland 
were with difficulty kept in the Union, and such was the volcanic 
nature of the cleavage that the State of Virginia was finally di- 



vided against itself. Lincoln at once realized the strategic situa- 
tion of the border states, and with the instincts of the great strat- 
egist that he was, he concentrated his first efforts upon their re- 
tention. So important was the task and so earnestly did Lincoln 
apply himself to it that some observer said: "Lincoln would like 
to have God on his side, but he must have Kentucky." 

The line of cleavage did not limit itself to territory, but it reached 
into the administrative branches of the Government, into the Army 
and into the Navy. One third of the officers, because of Southern 
lineage or Southern sympathies, left the regular naval and military 
forces of the Union. And I venture the assertion that the ,u 
single loss which the Union cause suffered during the whole conflict, 
was the loss of Robt. E. Lee. Many Southern men, however, preferred 
to stand by the Government, notably among whom were Senator An- 
drew Johnson, Generals Scott and Thomas, and Commodore Farra- 
gut. And it is to be said of the common soldier and sailor that not 
one of them deserted his post before actual war. 

Let us for a moment right here consider the relation of slavery 
to the dreadful war that was waged. .Some say that slavery bi 
on the war, and others say that the war was not waged in the in- 
terests of slavery. . Both claims are right .and probably both are 
by implication wrong: for slavery was not the immediate cause, the 
immediate "bone of contention," but slavery was the underlying cause, 
the cause of the cause of the war. We can best explain by a story. 
There are two neighbors living with no fence between them and 
no definite boundary line. One of those neighbors has a bad dog 
which the other does not like. They often quarrel about this dog. The 
one thinks that he has a right to keep him and let him run free; the 
other thinks that his neighbor has no right to keep that dog, or that, 
if he will keep him, he should keep him tied or in a kennel. Finally 
one of the neighbors decides to rid himself of the other neighbor by 
building a dividing fence. A fight grows out of their dispute about 
the right to build and the place to locate this fence. They arc fighting 
about the fence. But it is not hard to see the relation of the dog to 
this fence. Well, slavery was the dog of the Civil War. 

During the war there was a popular rhyme that ran thus : 

"In sixty-one, the war begun ; 
In sixty-two, we'll put it through ; 
In sixty-three, the nigger'll be free ; 
In sixty-four, the war'll be o'er — 

And Johnny come marching home." 

The prophecy of this popular doggerel was fulfilled, almost to the 
letter. In 1861, in spite of the president's protestations of non-inter- 
ference with slavery, war could not be averted. For the question had 
shifted from a question about the dog to a dispute about the fence. 
The price which the South demanded for peace was no longer slavery 
but secession. This price the Government would not pay. The spirit 
of war was full grown; the gaudium certaminis swept the whole man- 
hood of the nation towards the front. The first great shock at Bull 
Run resulted in a Northern defeat ; which, perhaps, did more good 
for the North than it did for the South, for it filled the South with 
confidence, but it filled the North with caution. In "sixty-two" the 
war was literally "put thru," and from the summer of this year till 
the appearance of black troops the outlook was very dark for the 
Union cause. In "sixty-three" came freedom and the Negro soldier, 
at the turning point of the war. The great commander thus brought 
up his black reserves just in time to strike the deciding blow. Lin- 
coln had the felicity of doing the right thing at the right time. Negro 



8 

troops would not have been welcomed by the Northern soldier before 
this time, and even now Lincoln found it hard to get the Negroes 
into the Government uniform; the white soldier wanted the Ne- 
groes to be dressed in a different color and sort of suit from his 
own. But the Union's need of the Negro overcame this prejudice. 
The Emancipation Proclamation was just in time, too — just in 
time to make the masses of foreign nations sympathize with the 
Northern side of the struggle, as being a struggle for freedom as 
well as for Union. If issued earlier, it would have been indeed 
a "Pope's bull against the comet." In "sixty-four" the war was 
practically over; even the Confederates had the feeling that it was 
simply a question of time and a question of terms. Lincoln stead- 
fastly refused to consider any terms but the restoration of the 
Union and the authority of the Government. 

Through it all Lincoln had been prosecuting the war with the 
energy of an experienced commander-in-chief. He had been sift- 
ing and shifting generals until he had finally brought out Grant. 
Pope, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, had all gone before. Some 
of them were energetic and aggressive, but none of them could 
be a match for the genius of the Confederate captain, Lee. Mc- 
Clellan was a great organizer but lacked the ability for energetic 
command in the field. So hesitant and unaggressive was he that 
miring his command there came into existence the famous phrase, 
"All is quiet on the Potomac." Somebodv praised McClellan for 
being a great "engineer"; Lincoln said yes, but that he seemed to 
have a special talent for developing a "stationary" engine. It is 
a remarkable thing to say of a man who was a civilian about all 
of his life, but Lincoln was a better strategist, excepting perhaps 
Grant, than any general that ever came to the command of the 
Army of the Potomac. By observation and study and sympathy, 
he learned more of the art of war than did his generals in the 
field. He warned Hooker not to have his army crossing the Rap- 
pahannock River in the presence of Lee, saying that Hooker's 
army would then be "like an ox jumped half over a fence and lia- 
ble to be torn by dogs front and rear, without a fair chance to gore 
one way or kick the other." He noted every detail in the move- 
ments of armies; he saw every opportunity to strike a deciding 
blow. Had he been in McClellan's shoes after Antietam, he would 
have injured Lee. Had he been in Meade's shoes after Gettys- 
burg, he would have crushed Lee. He kept telling his command- 
ers that the objective of the Army of the Potomac should be Lee's 
army and not Richmond. And when Grant came to command 
in the East he adopted the 'exact line of tactics which Lincoln had 
been endeavoring to urge upon his other generals; and Grant's 
success attests the military sense of Lincoln. 

In his relations with his Cabinet and other public officials his 
justness and patriotism are plainly shown. He chose the mem- 
bers of his cabinet with a view to their fitness for serving the coun- 
try, regardless of other considerations: he chose Chase, who was 
thinking that the country had made a great mistake in electing 
Lincoln to the Presidency instead of him; he chose Seward, who 
thought that he knew much more about the presidential office than 
tlif inexperienced Illinois lawyer, and was not kind enough to 
hide his opinion even from Lincoln himself; he chose Stanton, a 
Democrat, who had personally insulted Lincoln as a lawyer a 
few years before, who despised Lincoln the President as a frivo- 
lous story-teller, and from whom the president had sometimes to 
compel subordination, Tt is a marvellous record of tact and pa- 
triotic devotion how he harmonzied and ruled these conflicting, 
contending spirits; how he remained both master and friend. 



But be it said to the undying honor of all these men that they 
were devoted to their country and rendered invaluable service in 
her defense. Especially Stanton: he was a tyrant and a relentless 
prosecutor, — and that is well, for he was a good check upon the 
overmercifulness of Lincoln. These two characters complemented 
each other in the greated task of the administration: Stanton was 
the grim, relentless Mars, the god of war, caring more for the bus- 
iness than either for the sorrow or for the joy of battle; while 
Lincoln was the superior divinity, unlimited in power but pre- 
ferring mercy to justice, and restraining, with patient but authori- 
tative hand, the too furious course of the subordinate war-god. 

This great man also found it often necessary to "plough 
around" the disaffection or the apathy of the "plain people," in 
whom he had such noble confidence. This is not better seen any- 
where than in his relation to the slavery question. On this ques- 
tion he was too slow for some and too fast for others; he was too 
cold for the Abolitionists and too hot for the pro-slavery faction. 
It is the lot of a great, level, even, balanced man like Lincoln to 
be censured by both extremists. So normal was he that we find 
different persons applying exactly opposite epithets to him: some 
say that he was too radical, others that he was too conservative; 
some that he was too partisan, others that he was too liberal; 
some that he was extremely democratic, others that he was a 
tyrant; some say that he was too subject to sentiment, others that 
he was as feelingless as a stone; while his friends were charging 
him with being too lenient and too merciful to the enemy, the 
enemy were painting him as the incarnation of devilish malice. 
So it is not surprising that while some say that the whole purpose 
of his war and administration was to free and elevate the Negroes, 
others declare that he would never have issued the Emancipation 
Proclamation if he had not been compelled to do so. The true 
position of Lincoln is to be found about half way between all of 
these extremes. Personally he despised slavery, as practically 
all men. North and South, do today. But as President of the 
United States he had sense enough to see that it was his duty to 
look out for the interests of the Government and not for those 
of the Negro. He would interfere with slavery only when such 
interference was somehow connected with the welfare of the 
Union; he would save the Union either with or without slavery. 
What he did for black men, he did because he saw that it was 
good for all men. white and black. Said he: "In giving freedom 
to the slave, w T e assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in 
what we give and what we preserve." 

He was perfectly clear as to his personal inclination, saving: 
"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." He hated slavery 
most because of its demoralizing effect upon white men; because 
it compelled white men to engaee in too many sham arguments 
in their efforts to defend it; because it often made them attack the 
very foundations of human liberty; because it made them attack 
even the Declaration of Independence. He issued his proclamation 
of freedom deliberately and without compulsion, because he saw 
that it would be a winning card in the great game of war which he 
was playing for the prize of a united country. There is no doubt 
about his estimation of the act: he called it "the central act of 
my administration and the great event of the 19th century." He 
also said: "It is a momentous thing to be the instrument under 
Providence of the liberation of a race," and, "if my name ever 
goes into history it will be for this act." The most valuable pos- 
session of all that he has left us on this question of the Xegro 
is his willingness to learn and change his mind: he at first thought 



10 

that Negro soldiers would not fight, but when they fought, he 
acknowledged it; once he thought that only white men should 
vote, but later he acknowledged that to say that self-government 
is right and to say also that for one race to govern another 
against its wish and without its co-operation is likewise right, are 
as opposite as "God and Mammon." 

By 1865 he had overcome opposition in America and had out- 
lived the sneers of Europe, and was the most powerful man in the 
world. His favorite general. Grant, by literally battering the Con- 
federate army and pounding the defenses of Richmond, wtih re- 
peated strokes like the blows of Thor's hammer, had finally opened 
the gates of Richmond and compelled the retreat of the out-num- 
bered and outdone, but not out-generalled, Lee. Lincoln had en- 
tered Richmond, not as the conquerer enters the fallen stronghold 
of the enemy, but as a sympathetic man enters the scene of the 
common scourge of his country. On the 9th of April Lee surrend- 
ered an army of the most nervy and long-suffering soldiers that 
had ever followed an Anglo-Saxon captain; and on April the 14th, 
after a long season of the clouds and thunders and indiscriminating 
fires of war, glad for the returning sunshine of peace, filled with the 
milk of human kindness, and with the tenderest feelings of merci- 
fulness and pardon, the Great President was slain by the bullet of a 
misguided zealot. The foolish man expected some men to praise 
him for the deed, but the whole world abhorred him, hunted him and 
killd him like a dog. Grant, himself a man without the passion 
of hate, said of Lincoln: "In his death the nation lost its great- 
est hero; in his death the South lost its most just friend." At his 
funeral, immediately behind his coffin, marched a detachment of 
the troops of the race he had emancipated. 

He was buried in Springfield, 111., which had so long been his 
home. No one knew his birthplace, but the whole world knows 
his grave. At his death he was just fairly entered upon a second 
presidential term. Lowell calls him "the first Amreican." He was 
the first president of the Republic who was American through 
and through. There was not one foreign element in his bringing- 
up: he was an unmixed child of the Western plains, born in the 
South, reared in the North. Most of the presidents before him, 
being reared nearer the Atlantic, had imbibed more or less of 
Eastern culture and had European airs. This man Lincoln was 
so thoroughly democratic as to astonish both Old and New Eng- 
land. He never acted "the President." and was always a man 
among men, the honored servant of the people. 

From a five dollar fee before a justice of the peace, he had 
risen to a five thousand dollar fee before the supreme court of 
Illinois. From a study of "Dilworth's Spelling Book" in his sev- 
enth year, he had risen to write, in his fifty-sevetnh year, his sec- 
ond Inaugural, which is the greatest utterance of Man. And, yet, 
all of his days in school added together are less than one year. 
His pioneer life had given him a vein of humor which became 
his "life-preserver" in times of stress; it had also given him a love 
for human liberty that was unaffected. He felt that the enslave- 
ment of some men was but the advance guard, the miner and 
sapper of the enslavement of all men. He respected, even re- 
vered, the Constitution of his country, but he would violate a 
clause in order to save the whole instrument — just as a good sur- 
geon will amputate a limb to save a life. From a poor captain 
of volunteers in the scandalous little Black Hawk War, where 
he, jokingly, said he "bled, died and came away," although he 
never had a skirmish nor saw an Indian, he had risen to 
the chief command in a war that numbered three thousand battles 



11 

and skirmishes and cost three billion dollars. Having no ancestry 
himself, being able to trace his line by rumor and tradition only 
as far back as his grandfather, he became, like George Washing 
ton. the Father of his Country. Born of a father who could not 
write his name, he himself had written the Proclamation of 
Emancipotion, the fourth great state paper in the history of the 
Anglo-Saxon race — the others being Magna Charta, the Declara- 
tion of Independence and the Constitution. If we accept the 
Statement of Cicero that the days on which we are saved should 
be as illustrious as the days on which we are born, then Lincoln, 
the Savior, must always remain co-ordinate with Washington, 
the Father of his Country. Jackson was "Old Hickory," Taylor 
was "Old Rough," and there have been various names given to 
the other presidents, but Washington and Lincoln were the only 
ones whom the American people styled "Father." 

Nature tried herself in the year of 1809; many great and varied 
geniuses were born. Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were 
born on the same day, one to the mastery of nature and the other 
to the mastery of men; both circumpolar stars that never set. 

European people could not understand how a man like Lincoln, 
who was born, what they call a peasant, in Europe, could wear 
supreme power as lightly as Lincoln wore his. They had been 
used to Cromwells and Napoleons, who rose to rule and not to 
obey, to enslave and not to free, the people. A Frenchman 
could not understand why a rider like Lincoln, in command of a 
million armed men, would jeopardize his tenure of office by hold- 
ing a presidential election in 1864. A Frenchman would have de- 
clared the whole Constitution suspended and himself Dictator 
during the remainder of the war. But the Republican form of 
government was more respected by Lincoln in time of war than 
by some other presidents in times of the greatest peace. In this 
he rendered a great service, not only to his country, but to the 
whole liberty-loving world, for he showed the ability of a Repub- 
lic to save itself in a life-and-death grapple without abating the 
freedom of its citizenship. After his death, the French Liberals 
sent Mrs. Lincoln a medal to the honor of the deceased President, 
part of the inscription being: "Saved the Republic without veiling 
the Statue of Liberty." For the first time in the history of the 
world democracy had demonstrated its right to a place of re- 
spect beside the more ancient form of government. 

Again it is to the everlasting honor of the American people 
that the death of a man like Lincoln in a time like Lincoln's, 
should cause such a little stir and no revolution in the government. 
The vice-president, a man who did not possess the entire confi- 
dence of the party in power, was allowed to assume the office of 
president without a struggle. And it is a marvel of patriotism, of 
order and of self-control, than an army of a million men, who 
held within their hands a nation's fate, should march down Penn- 
sylvania avenue in review before this new president, lay down their 
victorious arms and return to the fireside and to the toil of factory 
and field. It was a sight for the gods, the demi-gods and the 
crowned heads of the ancient world. It was the triumph of Democracy. 

Child of the American soil, cradled and nursed in the very 
bosom of nature, he loved his country with the passion with 
which most men love their human mothers. He could not bear 
the thought of one iota of detraction from her honor, her dignity 
or her welfare. Against her dismemberment he was willing to 
fight to the end of his second administration or till the end of 
time. He might tolerate anything else except disunion. — even the 
right of some of his fellowmen to enslave others. Of every con- 



12 

cessioa which he made during his administration, to friend or foe, 
the sine qua non was Union. A house divided against itself can- 
not stand. In this he left us a great heritage; it is a lesson for 
both sections and for all races of any section. White men of the 
South, black men of the South, by the eternal God of heaven, there 
can be no division of destiny on the same soil and in the bosom 
and the lap of the same natural mother. Men may attempt and 
accomplish discrimination in a small way, but Almighty God and 
all-mothering nature are absolutely impartial. They have woven 
the fabric of life so that the thread of each man's existence is a 
part of the whole. He who sets fire to his neighbor's house, en- 
dangers the existence of his own; he who degrades his neighbor's 
children, undermines the character of his own. Together we rise 
and together we fall is the plan of God and the rule of Nature. We 
must lean together in the common struggle of life: the syncline 
is stronger than the anticline. In a great nation with an increas- 
ing fame, the lesson of Lincoln's life must grow in importance. 
As long as the human heart loves freedom his name will be a 
word on the tongues of men. His name will be a watchword 
wherever liberty in her struggles with tyranny, lifts her embat- 
tled banners. No man of the ancient or the modern world has a 
securer place in the hearts and memories of men than this man 
Lincoln, who was born in obscurity, who died in a halo, and who 
now rests in an aureola of historic glory. 



FINIS. 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



PRESS AND PERSONS ON THE "LINCOLN" SPEECH OF 
WILLIAM PICKENS, 

"It is a classic." — Mrs. Mary Church Te'rrell. 

"Withal one of the ablest addresses on Abraham Lincoln. The 
audience was enthralled. Now it laughed, now it held its breath, 
now it was amused, now it was held spellbound. Pickens was 
given an ovation when he closed."— The Boston "Guardian." 

"Because of its wit and humor, its fund of stories, its home- 
spun teachings, its unioue Lincolnesqueness, the oration of Pickens 
excels them all." — Bulletin of Y. M. C. A. Lecture Platform, Co- 
lumbus, Ga. 

"The highest tribute ever paid the Great Emancipator." — Supt. 
of Education, W. A. Lee. Welch. W. Va. 



THE ORATION IS LINCOLN-LIKE. 

NEW ill treatment, 
PLAIN in words, 
ROUGH in form, 
TRUE in facts, 

POINTED in arguments, 
LOFTY in spirit, 

PATRIOTIC in application. 
CLOTHED in humor, 

GLORIOUS in eloquence, 
setting forth a century of American life as it centered in the 
prophet-president, the immortal Lincoln, as only a genius can set 
forth a genius. — A. G. C. Randall. 

"The best delineation of the character of Lincoln." — The Au- 
diences. 



